Brian Stotko, Children’s Hospital Boston Clinical Genetics Fellow, Down Syndrome Program, wrote last week that a new, non-invasive test for Down syndrome is nearing reality:
But now scientists have learned how to quantify the fetal copies of the 21stchromosome, the genetic basis for Down syndrome, with a simple blood test taken in the first trimester. These tests would be safer, faster, and, most likely, cheaper than anything available today.
Because the current tests are invasive and are risky for the child, many parents choose not to test. But with this new test, Dr. Stotko expects that nearly every pregnant woman will know in the first trimester if her baby has Down syndrome. Dr. Stotko references the 92% rate for aborting these children using the current tests and asks the obvious question: will the births of babies with Down syndrome begin to decrease because of this testing?
Of course what he means is, will the decrease in births accelerate. With a 92% abortion rate, we are already experiencing a significant decline in the births of children with Down syndrome, even though many women choose not to test.
I am not against this new test; knowing things about a child before he or she is born can be very helpful in serving the child’s medical needs. I am against tests being used in a search-and-destroy matter. And I do not mean that from the perspective of parents. I am far more concerned about how doctors, medical systems, and insurers behave, because their current behavior generally is not in the interests of the children with Down syndrome being born.
Dr. Stotko addresses that issue as well:
Part of their decision will be based on the information they receive about Down syndrome from their medical providers. Yet, the majority of medical students argue that they get minimal education on children with intellectual disabilities; and nearly half of obstetric fellows claim their residency training is “barely adequate” to “nonexistent” in terms of how to counsel would-be parents of a child with intellectual disabilities. Some physicians who do routinely deliver a prenatal diagnosis also admit to purposely describing Down syndrome in negative terms. Not unexpectedly, then, many mothers feel that they receive inadequate, incomplete and sometimes offensive information about children with this condition.
I have no romantic notions that providing better education to doctors-in-training will turn this tide and create a whole generation of doctors who encourage mothers to let their children live. But I think it might help.
Closer to home, I wonder what the church will do. Will we stand for these parents and their children? Will we present a different view of disability to every member? Will we raise up a generation of doctors who battle for the unborn? Will we trust God to supply every need?
The Works of God 
How Long, Oh Lord?
January 21, 2011 by John Knight
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Proverbs 14:12
January 22 marks the 38th ‘anniversary’ of the decision to legalize abortion in the United States.
This website highlights abortion services available for ‘fetal anomaly.’ They include:
For the past 14 years we have terminated pregnancies for fetal abnormalities such as 1) Central Nervous System that include: holoprosencephaly, encephalocele, encephalomyelocele, hydrocephalus, Spina Bifida, holorachischisis, Dandy Walker, anencephaly, holoanencephaly, absence of corpus callosum; 2) Cardiac abnormalities that include: Primary Pulmonary Hypertension, Hypolastic left and right ventricle, holoacardius, tetraloy of Fallot, Eisenmenger’s complex, transposition of great vessels; 3) Chromosomal abnormalities that includes a) Common: trisomy 13, 18, 21, b) less common: trisomy 16, short arm and long arm deletions; 4) Skeletal abnormalities: Polydactyly, Achondroplasia, Osteogenesis imperfecta, lethal dwarfism, 5) Kidney abnormalities: Adult and Infantile Polycystic Kidney diseases, Potter’s Syndrome; 6) GI abnormalities: gastroschisis, omphalocele.
Some of the above are lethal to the child; he or she will die shortly after birth. Others, like Trisomy 21 (otherwise known as Down syndrome), include a lifetime of living with disability. And a lifetime with family and communities who both suffer and benefit from the life God has given.
Still others, like omphalocele, are not always disabling: “Complete recovery is expected after surgery for an omphalocele. However, omphaloceles often occur with other birth defects. How well a child does depends on which other conditions the child also has (Google Health).”
And they are all on a list, grouped impassionately together like groceries.
Disability does that in this culture – individual human beings created for God’s glory cease to be recognized as people, and the sum value of their lives is entirely defined by their disability. So, we eliminate a disability, not a person. But every one of those listed ‘procedures’ was done on a child, cruelly in the name of ‘compassion’ to prevent suffering in the child or the mother.
Disability is hard; I certainly understand that. But we should not wrap what is happening to our unborn children with disabilities in the pretty language of compassion, either for them or for their mothers. Once again, the strong are making permanent decisions about the interests of the weak. And the weak are being destroyed.
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